The Aim for Christian Living: Neither Poverty Nor Riches!
The Bible says in Proverbs 30:8-9 clearly says, "Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches: feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full and deny Thee and say, Who is the LORD? Or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain." In fact, people these days work solely to become rich rather when the Bible commands, Proverbs 23:4, "Labour not to be rich: cease from THINE OWN WISDOM." The truth is, people can be so preoccupied with grades, career, wealth, money, etc. that they really don't realize everything just fades away. Ecclesiastes 5:10 says, "He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity." People just keep wanting more and more and the sad truth is money is controlling people instead of them controlling money!
In fact, I may be engaged in a few banking transactions like investments, losses in my life helped me realize that everything is very temporal and that there is Heaven for Christians to look forward to. It's not to waste all your money, no not that. Instead, the fact is that Christians must really realize that the money 100% is NOT even theirs to begin with. God allows 90% for stewardship, 10% returned to Him, first fruits are to honor Him and for the ministry not for the pastor to spend on luxury but to spend for missions and supporting others in need. What is the Christian aim then? In fact, moth and rust do destroy wealth we gather but for the Christian, their wealth in Heaven cannot be broken as a reminder of what they did for God. Why always aim for billions of property estate? The problem is that even for a meager dime, the siblings will kill each other how much more for billions that will be left behind? Let me think about it that for one, the Gospel of Prosperity is a sham that we ought to be wary of because for one, people are so easy to suck into the Gospel of Prosperity because of their greed and insensibility. In truth, Christ did not promise a billionaire's life to the believer. Instead, He promised that their lives will be troublesome because of poverty and persecution yet He promises them He will never leave them or forsake them.
In truth, the problem is that it's okay to be rich and I have nothing against the rich people since they are a force of necessity to employ the less fortunate. However, what I am against is the whole mentality that we are stuck in a false gospel, a false good news that "Trust Christ and He will make you a billionaire." That is trash. We definitely are stuck with that kind of trash, we are so stuck in trying to make billions ignoring the children. What happens is that when we are so preoccupied with money, preoccupied with how to increase our money instead of how to use our money to glorify God we give room towards preachers who are guilty of filthy lucre and use the Bible to gain money instead of gaining converts. In fact, Solomon in all his wealth wasn't happy except with God be to Him. We really suffer because people today are too focused on money until they are duped away by fraudulent bank scams.